[gonehome]

This is a classic HN post that will get a lot of positive attention here playing into the HN cognitive bias zeitgeist, but I think is mostly bullshit.

The market will settle it in the end, but at least for startups being colocated is a competitive advantage.

[Ericson2314]

The blog post is confusing the nature of policy changes being bullshit with the in-office being bullshit.

Star ICs crushing it at remote work doesn't mean star teams; and if their coworkers are avoiding them in reviews it does sound like there are communication issues at play.

[fardo]

Teams avoiding security reviews are common cross-industry.

Incentives everywhere are “dodge” - the expected outcome for managers and engineers is missed deadlines and reschedulings on prior promises, frequent blame-focused meetings and late nights; and low prestige, high effort work unsuitable for making the company money, getting promotions, or maintaining agility in the future, as most security work is extremely mercurial and often only very marginally improves security, if at all.

Most “security fixes” at large firms are built on inscrutable black-box internal tooling which becomes a massive single point of failure and is rarely as hardened as implied, gets re-shuffled on what constitutes “best practices” every 12 months such that a feature team can spend literally all their time doing security work the team will be throwing out next year, are often not intelligently scoped to handle “this issue doesn’t specifically apply to my component”, and aren’t even the weak link when most hacks are

> An insider replied to the wrong email, or put a zip file into a thumb drive then ran off with everything his computer had downloaded, which was a lot.

Most teams grit their teeth and implement, but if the benefit isn’t there, just the requirement, teams remember and get a lot slower to pick up the phone.

[EPWN3D]

I'm not so sure -- the in-concert RTO hardline from FAANG has a very "collusion" vibe to it. Those CEOs probably got together specifically to undermine the labor market's natural incentives. It'd be great if the DoL looked into that like they did when these CEOs colluded to keep salaries and comp down across Silicon Valley.

And don't forget that these companies all have policies of not hiring high-level ICs from the outside. So if you're at that level, your options to jump ship can be quite limited unless your current employer is truly toxic. Again, a practice designed to keep comp at the top IC bands down.

[asah]

remote-first means hiring the best-fit people for your company at the time and them working precisely when they're ready to be productive, zero commute, zero overhead.

good luck competing with that.

source: 25 years and 8+ companies working remotely.

[TrapLord_Rhodo]

8+ companies in 25 years? Seems like being remote first makes it very easy for your employees to jump ship, be taking interviews on the job, or even working multiple jobs.

[CoinFlipSquire]

I think it also presupposes that the market is good and the industry has spots available. It's just not that simple though. The advice the blog gives isn't necessarily wrong on it's face but what if you can't get another job quickly? What if the market is bad and people are trying to scramble for a job?

People who can just easily get another job and are just engineer interview ready at all points aren't exactly the majority.

[asah]

remote-first means hiring the best-fit people for your company at the time and them working precisely when they're ready to be productive, zero commute, zero overhead.

good luck competing with that.

source: 25 years and 8+ companies working remotely, and obliterating competitors stuck in the old ways.

[kaesar14]

Interesting that over those 25 years I can think of 1, maybe 2 start-ups that really succeeded being remote-first.

[asah]

most companies didn't allow themselves to run the experiment.

there's many examples where new projects ("startups") succeeded, including 1000s of FOSS projects that were remote-first.

also, large companies often have products that get to market via cross-functional teams in lots of locations - they're remote-first by definition.

[ChicagoBoy11]

On that note, I also did not understand the post about H1B workers. Ostensibly a primary reason for the existence of the visa category in their first place is to fulfill the need for foreign talent that needs to be PRESENT in the US.

[Scoring6931]

It is about being present in the office. As opposed to working from home, as in a house in the US.

[t0mas88]

But if the work can be done fully remote, why does the person need a visum to be in the US? Why not work remote from abroad without visa requirements and probably with lower cost of living?

[slumpt_]

I disagree. Colocation isn't the competitive advantage for startups. Strong communication is.

You can get part of this for 'free' if you shove everyone in a room.

You can also get this if you invest in strong remote culture that encourages lots of remote collaboration.

Source: I've been at a remote-first startup that is kicking ass over the last two years. In-office is available but remains entirely optional.

[gonehome]

I'll concede this point - it is primarily about communication.

In theory you can resolve this (I'm at a remote company now and think gathertown is a great tool for this), but the lift is high and I suspect the majority of remote companies are operating at a net negative vs. colocation because of this.

Even with these tools, some natural amount of human communication/interaction is lost. It mostly hurts spontaneous collaboration and junior engineers - the threshold for these (comms/collab) is higher than in the office even in ideal remote conditions. Normal human team bonding/relationship building stuff is also lost (and useful for building a high performance culture).

This is also assuming you're at least within mostly the same or close timezones, add that into the mix and it gets even worse.

Other people replying don't understand what I mean by the market solving this. If remote is truly advantageous then startups that are remote first should out compete those that aren't. Empirically this appears to not be true and at least in SF and AI (the sector with the largest return likely in the next decade) people are going back to being colocated because of its advantages (primarily around communication and cycle times).

Mostly I see motivated reasoning primarily as the argument in favor of remote being better. I get it, I work remotely - there are nice quality of life advantages, but I still think it's competitively worse for companies in almost all cases.

[slumpt_]

The competitive disadvantage RTO companies have is trying to hire locally.

We have the pick of the best engineers from around the country (in some cases, world) because we pay bay area (startup adjusted) salaries regardless of where you live. The team is top notch - probably the best I’ve ever worked with.

So yeah - a cost to maintaining comms culture, but the payoff can be pretty nonlinear.

[gonehome]

My counter argument would be that a lot of the world’s best people move to hubs anyway to intentionally be around other great people.

So being located in the Bay Area gets you the world’s best people without the negative tradeoffs of remote.

That said, I think your point is valid for startups located outside of hubs. If your company would otherwise be located in rural South Dakota (or even a decent sized non-hub city), then yes - remote is more compelling for the reasons you state. Whether that’s a competitive advantage on net given the downsides is not clear to me.

[mouzogu]

> The market will settle it in the end

like "The market" is some rational, logical all-knowing, all-wise higher force.

"The market" is a bunch of rich assholes that act in their own self interests.

They don't give a sh-t about you and they definitely don't give a sh-t about me.

[npsimons]

> "The market" is a bunch of rich assholes that act in their own self interests.

For instance, demanding that people commute to the RE they've invested in before their investments fall through the floor in valuation.

Lot of naysayers here claiming illegitimate "bias" when people point out their increased productivity when working from home (just the lack of interruptions and forced writing down of institutional knowledge are worth it), but will they admit there is plenty of bias from corporate officers owning real estate in the downtowns where offices are, or just managers at all levels feeling power to micromanage and lord over people slipping through their fingers?

[mvdtnz]

A vanishingly small proportion of business owners or managers have any investment in commercial real estate beyond the office lease they're holding. Virtually none of them own their commercial premises.

[npsimons]

> Virtually none of them own their commercial premises.

Of course this is probably the case; but how many people in higher positions are invested in REITs that invest in commercial RE? I bet it's a fairly large proportion. Hews to the old adage espoused by Buffet and others of "only invest in what you know."

Just because they don't have skin in the game on that particular building they are bossing people around in doesn't mean they don't have vested interest in seeing office space being rented in general.

[orblivion]

You and I are also part of the market. We get to influence it with our decision about who to work for.

[amanaplanacanal]

I bet the percent of people working at startups is tiny though.